Category: Catalonia/Spain

February 12, 2023

Grabbing Granados

[This article* was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Feb. 2023.] A huge boat is sinking in The English Channel. A man is clinging on to the side of a tiny raft, only big enough for one woman to kneel on. Soon, both drown in sight of other passengers. According to witness Daniel Sargent, this…
January 29, 2023

La mà que va signar el paper* (The Hand That Signed The Paper) by Dylan Thomas

(*Translated into Catalan below with Antoni Cardona) La mà que va signar el paper va enderrocar una ciutat; Cinc dits sobirans van posar taxes a l’alè, Van duplicar els morts a la terra i van partir pel mig un país; Aquests cinc reis van fer que morís un rei La poderosa mà porta a una…
January 18, 2023

Christmessi

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2023.] Is the legend now complete? Is it a case of all praise to The Great One, Lionel Messi, the Messiah of Argentina, Saviour of Rosario and FIFA-family favourite? On the whole it seems so, but like so many public figures, this 35 year old…
December 23, 2022

Promenade of Desire

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Dec. 2022 under the title “Promenade of multitudes”] A really good book is a universe away from its marketing. One vibrant new piece of nonfiction, “Promenade of Desire, A Barcelona Memoir” is being promoted as “a sensual coming of age story: From Catholic virgin to Mata…
December 8, 2022

“The skin of a bull” by Salvador Espriu (My translation from Catalan*)

Sometimes it is necessary, essentialthat a man dies for a peopleBut an entire people must never diefor a single man:Remember this, Sepharad. Make sure to keep the bridges of dialogue safeand try to understand and lovethe different reasonings and tongues of all your children.Drop by drop, let the rain fall on the seedlingsand the air…
November 13, 2022

Captured

[A version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2021.] “I’m the only foreigner in the Catalan government,” Italian, Francesca Bria used to sometimes say when introducing herself to a public audience. In the two years leading up to the pandemic, her team’s work on “digital sovereignty” for people living in the Catalan…
November 12, 2022

Greater than skaters

Climate change, habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, ocean plastics, food insecurity and the list goes on. What can one person do? That’s a question that John French has been asking himself for nearly four decades. He moved to Spain over 10 years ago and says he has found an answer that came from a most…
October 16, 2022

It has now come to this

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Oct. 2022.] The following is based on current and factual information… How would you fancy sleeping in a car or a van? Rather than the now antiquated 20th century idea of having your own bed in something as outdated as a house, for the price of…
September 18, 2022

Baldwin’s Barcelona

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Sept. 2022.] The book must always come before the author,” said Nobel Prize winner, VS Naipaul. Unlike another genius such as James Baldwin, Napaul spent his entire brilliant, vicious life seemingly trying to prove himself wrong. For Baldwin, words came first. By becoming a child preacher…
July 30, 2022

Summer at its widest

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today, July 2022.] 15 summers ago (my first full one here) the CCCB, or Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona showed French-Jewish filmaker Claude Lanzmann’s “extraordinary diptych of the Holocaust.” Coming after the critically acclaimed, monumental 9 and a half hour documentary, Holocaust [or “Shoah”] of 1985, the…